Ake's Pains debuted in the University of Akron Buchtelite in September of 1977. The school's reputation as an institute of higher learning has still not recovered. Ake's Pains returns after a brief 32 year hiatus. It's back, baby!

Sunday, April 5, 2015

Don’s Excellent (Business) Adventure

It is best when business trips are uneventful. Of course you want the “business” part to be
successful, but you want the “trip” part to be boring.

Unfortunately, my recent trip to a trade show in
Louisville was not boring, it was “eventful”.
The events of which I will journal here:

Day 1

- The trip gets off to a
fine start when my flight to Louisville is delayed due to a major mechanical problem,
which took over an hour to repair.
Normally this would not be a big deal, but the delay caused me to miss
my boss’s big presentation. This was not
good. Later in the day when potential
customers asked me questions about the presentation, I responded with: “Hey,
how about the weather in Louisville this year?”

-Fortunately there were free appetizers
provided after the conference and I did get a free notepad and pen, so it wasn’t
a total waste.

-Then it was off to dinner with some potential
customers. The plan here is to stuff
these people so full of expensive steak that they buy something. Someone should make a video game out of
it. You stuff steaks in the guy’s mouth
until he opens his wallet. Stuff too many steaks in there however and he pukes
all over you.

-While walking downtown to the restaurant I
noticed a chunky-chicky wearing a micro-mini.
Usually when you say a woman is showing off some leg, you are talking
length. But in this case, it was length and width! And the wind was blowing -
hey hey. I thought my 22-ounce ribeye
would be the beefiest thing I saw that evening – but I was wrong.

Beefy - but not the beefiest!

-Fortunately, there were free appetizers
before the meal. Actually they weren’t
really free; they were very, very, expensive. But they were free for me since I
wasn’t paying the bill. So hell yeah, I
do want the last shrimp, thank you.

-The dinner experience was topped off by our
flamboyant waiter Antonio, enthusiastically reading off the desert menu, and
everything was “lusciously drizzled” in something!

Day 2

-The day starts off by realizing I packed the
wrong clothes for the trip. How I could
possibly do this? I have no idea.
Sometimes I can make a moron look intelligent. Which is ironic because …..

-I am considered an intelligent industry
expert and some investment people actually pay me to have breakfast with
them. They ask me questions, I say
expert type things, and they vigorously type the information into their
tablets. I fail to mention that I cannot
even manage to pack the correct clothes for a trip and fortunately they do not
ask why I am wearing flannel at this meeting.

-Then it is time for the actual trade
show. My company doesn’t have a display
booth. I am there to make as many
connections and trade as many business cards as I can. I end up walking almost seven miles and
destroying a pair of socks in the process.

-That evening I attend a reception where
fortunately there are a plethora of free appetizers.

-I am at a table with a group of guys laughing, drinking and having a good time, when a game of “One-Up” begins. “One-Up is an informal game men play. It starts when one guy brags about something
and then the other guys take turns “topping” the feat until someone says
something that can’t be topped and he is declared the “winner”.

So some guy casually mentions
that his wife only weighs 110 pounds.
The next “contestant” jumps in and says: “That’s nothing, my wife weighs
105 pounds”

At this point I decline to
participate in the game. I do not know
what my wife weighs. I could ask, but I
still would not know and it would be the last question I would ever ask. This subject is on a strictly “need to know”
basis, and trust me, I do not need to know.

I do not want people snickering at my funeral.
“Why did she kill him?” someone would inquire. “I heard he asked her how much
…… massive snickering…… I think it is a statistical
probability that my wife weighed 105 pounds sometime in her life; however I am
not even going to speculate when that was.
Let’s just forget I even mentioned this.

-After leaving that reception, I notice
another reception across the hall. There
is no one screening people, so I enter and fortunately locate the free
appetizers.

-I take a taxi back to the hotel. I give my driver, Efanlinos (close to his
real name), my hotel and the street it is on. He drops me off and I head to my
room, exhausted after a very strenuous day and my belly full of free
appetizers. I go to elevator and notice
something confusing. My room is on the
fourth floor, but this hotel only has three floors. I was at the wrong hotel.

I
will not explain how this happened, but I am not as stupid as you may think I
am right now. Regardless, please don’t
mention this incident to the people who paid to eat breakfast with me. I call Efanlinos (he was picking me up in the
morning); he returns and attempts to blame me for the mix up. No Efanlinos, I
gave you the correct hotel and THE STREET, you $%#*ed it up! You only missed it by nine miles!

Day 3

-There is a young, hot, female TSA agent
barking out orders in the airport security line. And then I’m sort of enjoying it as she
orders me to take off my jacket, shoes and belt. At my age having a young, hot, chick urgently
demand that I remove my clothing is rather stimulating. I so much want to ask her “what she has in
mind?” However, I know if I do, she
will take me into a room and will penetrate me to the maximum with her wand. And I think she would really enjoy that,
which means a twist is even possible. Because
I will need to be seated for my two return flights, I decide to keep my mouth
shut.

-The flights home are uneventful and I get on
the airport shuttle to get to my car.
Seated next to me is a very attractive South American woman talking loudly
on her cell phone. You try not to follow
the conversation (which was just stupid stuff), but it is almost impossible
under the circumstances.

But when the driver pulls up
to her car, she ends the conversation by saying in a hushed, sexy, voice: “Bubble
bath selfies, bubble bath selfies, bubble bath selfies!” and then jumps into her Mercedes.